WITH only two weeks to go until the smoking ban comes in, there's a good few people trembling at the thought of not being able to light up when they want.

As an anti-smoker, I'm thrilled that I'll be able to wake up the morning after a night out and not have to fumigate my wardrobe.

But I do have a twinge of sympathy for smokers.

Not the ones who are trying to give up, they don't need my sympathy, they need sensitivity and a nicotine patch the size of the Ricoh Arena.

It's the other ones, the more pathetic kind - the ones for whom every waking moment is about having a fag. They're the ones I feel for.

You see them in airports, looking a bit green around the gills, clutching their duty-free bags like their life depended on it.

Through to the departure lounge and they're chain-smoking five cigarettes at a time, desperate to build up some kind of nicotine barrier against the horror of a 10-hour smoke-free flight.

Then at the other end of the flight, their haunted eyes scan for the shortest queues at passport control, desperation coursing through their veins, focusing solely on that first drag. It can't be pleasant.

Of course if they'd never started in the first place...

But I digress. I am one of those people smug in the fact I've never tried a cigarette.

And thank heavens I didn't, as I'd probably have ended up just like the ones I feel the most sorry for.

The ones who are proper, grown up, pension-saving adults. Whose parents still don't know they smoke.

My boss is like this; mid 30s, in charge of 20 staff. He has his own house, his own car.

He can talk knowledgeably about politics, popular culture, and journalistic law.

He uses phrases such as "we had a marvellous bottle of Rioja at the weekend".

And "John and I were debating whether to go for a round of golf later, after the Regional Performance Plan meeting".

Yet when I asked him to help me out with a quote for something I was writing about the smoking ban, he said "I can't.

"My mum might read it and she doesn't know I smoke". Oh good grief.

I find it incredible that the things you might have done to disguise a cheeky fag at the school disco when you were 15 are still considered the techniques of a criminal mastermind 20 years later.

What did my ex-boyfriend (again whose mother didn't know hesmoked) do when she was coming round? He sprayed deodorant liberally round the lounge and he (and this is my favourite bit) ate a mint.

A decade of 20 low-tar cigarettes a day, overpowered by a single mint.

I tried to explain once, the reason why some women wear so much perfume is because they're so used to its scent that they become immune to it, so spray more because they don't think it's having an effect.

Meanwhile everyone around them is choking on a fug of Obsession.

It's the same with smoke; just because you're used to the smell doesn't mean others are.

Mothers aren't daft. The criminal masterminds always used to have the same excuse if any suspicions were cast as to the smell of smoke on them too: "Oh yeah, that's cos I was in a smoky pub," they'd say.

Genius. Until now.

So if you aren't planning on making some changes to accommodate the smoking ban, best you start coming up with a better excuse, or this time, they really will find out.